Please see the below from John Hulett, Trustee of Sharing Life Trust:
Dear Supporters of Sharing Life,
Despite the current lockdown we really hope that 2021 will bring relief from the impact of the pandemic and some return to ‘normal life’ for all of us. Having said that, the issues around the great inequality that exists in our society at the moment will mean that demand for our foodbank will probably continue at a high level for the foreseeable future. There are many groups campaigning nationally to do something about this and also locally. With the support of our partner agencies, particularly the CAB, and also the opening of a local debt centre run by Christians Against Poverty, we hope that we can continue to help as many households as possible to see an improvement in their wellbeing and financial position in the coming year.
This month we have included the annual statistics as well as those for December which was another record month in terms of demand.
During the whole of 2020:
We delivered 717 food parcels supporting 997 adults and 925 children in a total of 148 households.
The number of food parcels represented a 73% increase on 2019 and the number of individual households increased by 29% from the previous year.
Analysis of these statistics has to be cautious but we offer the following observations:
There seem to be a significant number of households caught in a ‘poverty trap’ of some kind which means that they are in need of on-going support in terms of food aid. The average number of food parcels being provided per household over the past year was 4.8. This was up from 3.6 in the previous year.
The number of households that we supported last year represents approximately 0.6% of the total number of households in the area we serve. This confirms the overall ‘affluent’ nature of the area but also the importance of having access to the kind of aid that Sharing Life and others provide.
Statistics for December were as follows:
94 food parcels were delivered
These provided for 120 adults and 118 children
82% of these were referred by one of our partner agencies
Membership of Community Larder continues at around 60. Because of the current pandemic situation we are not widening the publicity for this yet. Eventually we hope to get membership up to about 100. Because of Tier4 restrictions and the current lockdown we are again reviewing procedures for running the Larder. We are planning for it to continue at Christchurch with even more stringent safety measures.
Thank you again for your support over this past year. We have been overwhelmed with the generosity of so many people in our community with both financial gifts and gifts of food. We are also very grateful for the many hours given by our great team of volunteers.
With our very best wishes to everyone,
John
John Hulett
Trustee
Sharing Life Trust
Lifeline: 0300 201 0212
